Complexity snarls multicloud network management

Gaining firm control over a multicloud network environment can deliver performance, efficiency, and security gains – but it won’t be easy.

Managing a multicloud network is a highly demanding task, says Robert Orshaw, a managing director at Deloitte Consulting. “The primary challenges include maintaining a holistic view of security controls, meeting regulatory standards across varied cloud platforms, securing data across multiple providers to prevent unauthorized access or accidental loss, and managing the architectural and operational complexity of utilizing multiple providers,” he explains. “Additionally, a multicloud environment can introduce cost inefficiencies due to resource sprawl across different platforms.”

Coping with complexity

Several factors contribute to making multicloud network management a complex and, at times, frustrating task. “These include skills and expertise gaps, complex tools and application integrations, security challenges, vulnerabilities, and infrastructure visibility across networks and beyond,” says Venkata Achanti, vice president, cloud, and custom applications, at business advisory firm Capgemini Americas. “Additionally, payment processes can differ for each cloud provider, making it difficult to manage costs.”

Multiple vendors are leading the charge of managing and/or running multicloud environments, including Cisco, Datadog, HPE, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, Red Hat, and VMware.

“These players have specific roles at various tiers of multicloud, from log to traffic governance,” says Mohammad Wasim, global practice lead for cloud, infrastructure, and security with digital transformation consulting firm Publicis Sapient. Many of these vendors have mature feature sets. “The ones investing to bring disruption are Nvidia and AWS on their silicon chips, which will fundamentally change the [multicloud] performance level as well as enable moving the processing of data to the edge.”

Multicloud network management poses significant challenges, primarily due to the inherent complexity and scale of handling diverse cloud environments, Wasim observes. “Organizations adopting multicloud strategies often grapple with managing different technologies, architectures, and vendors across various cloud providers,” he explains. “This complexity introduces challenges in orchestrating seamless interactions and ensuring compatibility.”

While each cloud provider does its best to make networking simple across clouds, all have very nuanced differences and varied best practices for approaching the same problem, says Ed Wood, global enterprise network lead at business advisory firm Accenture. This makes being able to create enterprise-ready, secured networks across the cloud challenging, he adds.

Wasim believes that a lack of intelligent data utilization at crucial stages, from data ingestion to proactive management, further complicates the process. “The sheer scale of managing resources, coupled with the dynamic nature of cloud environments, makes it challenging to achieve optimal performance and efficiency.”

Making network management even more challenging is a lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities. This can be attributed to an absence of agreement on shared responsibility models, Wasim says. As a result, stakeholders, including customers, cloud service providers, and any involved third parties, might each hold different views on responsibility and accountability regarding data compliance, controls, and cloud operations management.

“Furthermore, with multicloud, organizations are seeing a convergence in roles and job descriptions,” he notes. For example, a network engineer may be required to oversee the entire cloud infrastructure instead of just a single localized network. “If an organization doesn’t have the right talents and skillsets, managing the network in a multicloud environment may become challenging.”

Frustrations and blind spots

Effective multicloud network management can also be derailed by mistakes made by team members.

“With today’s ease of access to cloud platforms, virtually anyone in an organization can create significant governance blind spots, often leading to shadow IT-type risks,” warns Orshaw. “With virtually anyone able to deploy cloud elements, the effort required for adequate governance becomes a major frustration, emphasizing the vital need for a comprehensive, organization-wide multicloud strategy.” Such a strategy forces IT to deploy an efficient and dependable multicloud network management platform. “The difficulty is in finding platforms that have similar strengths across all cloud providers.”

Wasim notes that multicloud management often includes operational challenges related to migration, a lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities, technical complexities arising from managing multiple cloud architectures, and cloud costs.

“A multicloud environment, by nature, is decentralized, and having a cloud strategy on paper is not enough.” He observes that blind spots often emerge due to a “lack of cadence” between procurement managers, the cloud team, the IT team, CFO team members, and the cloud service provider.

Network issues are another concern. A typical cloud infrastructure’s scale can make it difficult for the network team to have full visibility into the data flow, Wasim says. Therefore, both infrastructure and operations leaders should be investing in AIOps platforms to improve network visibility.

Developing and advancing the skillsets of existing talent to manage multicloud can be time consuming and costly. “Leaders must increase their focus on acquiring, training, and retaining such talent, which can be arduous,” Achanti says.

Essential tools

When deploying a multicloud network management platform, Orshaw advises using strong tools to detect, monitor, and manage all essential assets. He also advocates a robust cybersecurity strategy that’s integrated directly into the network platform.

To improve both multicloud network management and security, Achanti says it’s advisable to use dashboards and other tools  that can provide thorough visibility into infrastructure and application assets. He also recommends deploying processes that target cybersecurity and compliance requirements. “In a multicloud environment, more effort is required when developing procedures that reinforce security, because each cloud vendor has unique techniques native to their cloud environment,” Achanti says.

Critical features

A multicloud network management tool should provide integrated visibility and management capabilities delivered as a cohesive layer above each cloud provider’s native tooling, Orshaw says. “These essential single-pane-of-glass solutions allow organizations to utilize the powerful tools that the hyperscalers offer natively.”

When selecting a management tool, Wood suggests looking for event management and correlation, AI insights, external sources ingestion, and strong visualization capabilities. “It’s key to be able to integrate with various third-party vendor solutions and orchestrate them along cloud service provider native services,” he says. “While cloud service providers aim to provide, and continuously improve. cloud native services, almost every large enterprise will have third-party provider needs.”

Orshaw recommends adopting a disciplined FinOps practice that not only provides the right amount of governance, but also helps optimize spend across cloud service providers. “The main characteristics of a multicloud network management platform should include unified management, automation, standardization, visibility and monitoring, security, vendor management, training and skills development, and continuous optimization.”

Perhaps the most important decision in any multicloud strategy is handling the orchestration between various cloud technologies. “It’s not about how a single pane shows the dashboards of multiple and different clouds, but how we engineer the solution so that it’s set up in a uniform and standard manner,” Wasim says. Prioritizing orchestration not only improves multicloud management, but it also reduces the business impact when downtime incidents occur, since the approach makes it easier to troubleshoot issues. Meanwhile, automation tools are necessary to streamline workflows and ensure seamless collaboration across diverse cloud environments.

Current trends

AI is the most important multicloud network management trend, Orshaw says. “Using AI technologies ultimately leads to detection and self-healing without any human intervention.”

Wasim agrees. “An ideal multicloud management solution should incorporate AI-based features that excel in anomaly detection, event management, and correlation in implementing use cases with different technology frameworks.” Such capabilities, he notes, enable multicloud adopters to proactively identify and address issues at stages as early as the design phase, minimizing build-out effort and downtime while improving overall performance. What’s most critical, Wasim says, is that strong AI-supported data security measures are implemented consistently and are designed to provide effective governance capabilities to safeguard against potential risks and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.

Traditional monitoring tools may not be enough to allow multicloud adopters to fully understand data flow, as well as any vulnerabilities attributable to configuration integration or mismanagement, Wasim warns. “AI-powered tools help in understanding patterns in large datasets while automating remediation and, therefore, improve key metrics, such as time-to-resolve network issues,” he says. “AI, along with ML, is now helping the IT footprint with proactive maintenance.” These technologies can also project business outcomes or events.

Besides detecting anomalies, AI-based solutions can also contribute to intelligent decision-making, allowing multicloud adopters to navigate the complexities of their environments with enhanced agility and precision, Wasim says. “What’s now being tested is generative AI, which is lowering the expectation of tech capability in CloudOps engineering,” he notes. “As efficiencies in tools such as CodeWhisperer, Copilot, or Amazon Q improve, we will see exponential efficiency gains.”

“Selecting the right vendor to accelerate your multicloud journey comes down to identifying the organizations that have a solid track record of excellence and expertise in the sector and capability areas most relevant to your organization,” Orshaw says.